04:11 pm
Bombing in Peshawar; Gross Stupidity in DC
Via the NYT:
Militants opened fire on security guards and rushed a small truck packed with explosives through the gates of a five-star hotel in this northwestern city on Friday, detonating a huge bomb in the parking lot that killed at least 11 people and wounded 55, Pakistani officials said.
Witnesses said the blast left a crater six feet deep and 15 feet wide and was powerful enough to be heard for miles. Police officials estimated that more than 1,000 pounds of explosives were used.
Television images showed parts of the hotel reduced to rubble and wounded people with blood-soaked clothes being helped out of the smoke-filled lobby of the hotel, the Pearl Continental, one of the few in the city that cater to Western visitors.
I’ve stayed at the Pearl (and at the Marriott in Islamabad, which was bombed in a similar attack last September). My thoughts go out to those who fell victim, particularly the Pakistanis working in the hotel.
This is in all likelihood the work of al Qaeda, who, as Patrick Barry over at Democracy Arsenal notes, may have been responding to a McClatchy report that the U.S. planned to buy the hotel and turn it into a “super consulate.”
A senior State Department official confirmed that the U.S. plan for the consulate in Peshawar involves the purchase of the luxury Pearl Continental hotel. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.
Hope the “senior State Department official” who blabbed about this to McClatchy is happy. There are few things worse in this world that talky “senior officials” (a monniker that isn’t always true, as reporters use it to describe everyone above a desk officer) who share operational details of a sensitive (and uncontroversial) project and put lives at risk just so they can feel good about having talked to a reporter.
Hell isn’t warm enough for folks that vain or stupid.